One compliment I’ve stopped accepting

And I admit…I used to feel really good when people would set me apart from other women. But then I have to admit that like most people I was latently misogynistic.

And the more I think about it the more I realise that if women don’t deliberately get on their own side nobody will. I’m not different from other women and setting myself apart from them won’t spare me from going through the garbage other women have to live with.

It’s kind of like black people who create an internal rating system because they think that will keep them safe from racism. Because agreeing with white people that (some) black people are despicable will make it clear that you’re not one of those black people….that you’re different…that you’re not a nigger. Chile….please pree Facebook live and the court system them nah pree none a we out here and dem nah differentiate. So we a separate out we self fi try fit een but a nuh the ghetto a di problem a the black so it cyan change. And the more we separate out we self the weaker we become and the stronger they become by comparison.

You may get ahead as an individual by siding with your oppressor, but it will always be temporary because though your individual value has increased the intrinsic value of the group you represent has decreased because of the actions you have taken. And that must eventually come to haunt you.

I am exactly like most girls…most the girls I know at least.

And for the girls who are nothing like me…there’s really nothing wrong with them.

The thing that underwrites these compliments and rating system and a lot of our courting and dating culture….hell the thing that underwrites most of the songs we THINK celebrate women is the need to big up one set of women by putting another set down. All it does is perpetuate competition between women and empower a culture that feels its okay to tell women how to be and judge those who don’t fall in line with our specific idea of woman. The compliments also ignore that ‘most girls’ become the way they are as a result of being beaten down/oppressed or trying to overcome a culture that is set against them. So then we punish women for the things they have to do to survive and the ways they struggle.

Me done wid it.

It takes a lot of re-thinking and re-calibrating. It takes a deliberate intervention into anti-woman-ness and girl hate. But it’s necessary because a) I can’t really love me while hating people who are like me and b) women have it hard enough dealing with patriarchal men, we shouldn’t have to deal with patriarchal women too.